Monday, March 11, 2013

This was another one of those books whose title (and cover
featuring Sean Young as the replicant Rachel from Bladerunner) made it irresistible
to me. As my readership already know I am a huge fan of Film Noir and its
modern successor Neo-Noir so I was really looking forward to reading about the
philosophical underpinnings of the whole thing. I was however slightly disappointed
with the whole thing – though only slightly and only until I adjusted my
preconceptions a bit. For although the word Philosophy was prominently
displayed on the front cover and even mentioned several times in the various
articles between its covers the main thrust of the book was very much from the
film studies genre rather from any philosophical point of view. Of course, by
and large, this was no bad thing and I must admit that I did learn a thing or
two about Neo-Noir in general and the movies discussed in particular it’s just
that I would’ve liked a bit more philosophy and a bit less discussion of the
cinematic arts (to say nothing of one particular section that I found almost
unreadable as it was chock full of film jargon and, to be frank, so far up its
own arse as never to see daylight again.)

Anyway….. After a general explanation of what exactly
Neo-Noir was – basically Noir type movies made after the classic Noir films – a
selection of authors dived into various movies to discuss the ins and outs of
each one logically starting with Bladerunner (1982) as it appeared on the
cover. This was probably the most philosophical of all the articles concentrating
on the idea of humanity, free choice and authenticity in the Sartre sense. Then
we had several interesting articles on Point Blank (1967) and Memento (2000)
discussing personal identity (without memories who are we really?) and the
nature of reality (how can we be sure that any of our experiences are actually
real?). After that it got a bit less philosophical with a discussion of The
Onion Field (1979) and the idea of guilt vs justice, A Simple Plan (1998) and
the idea of moral corruption, Hard Eight (1996) and atonement, Reservoir Dogs
(1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill 1 & 2 (2003, 2004) and the idea
of redemption. After that I felt that we moved fully away from any philosophic
bent and moved straight onto film criticism (with a slight tinge of philosophy
to shoe-horn the articles between the pages of a philosophical publication) as
various authors discussed Chinatown (1974), Blood Simple (1984), Fargo (1996), The
Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), The Big Lebowski (1998) and finally – and bizarrely
to my mind – the 1980’s TV series Miami Vice.

Now I didn’t exactly dislike this book. Once I
got over the mild disappointment of it not being as philosophical as I had
hoped and expected it was reasonably interesting. I certainly learnt quite a
bit about various aspects of Neo-Noir that I would probably never have
considered prior to reading this book. It probably would have helped if I’d
have seen more of the films being discussed (I think I managed about 50% to be
honest) so maybe the feeling that it could have been a better more engaging
book stems from my apparent ignorance of the modern genre. It’s certainly
possible. So although I won’t be giving this a blanket recommendation I’ll
leave it to other Noir fans to decide if this is a good book or not.